Boundaries (19 page)

Tanya withdraws her hand. She crosses her legs at her knees. A dark shadow seems to loom over her eyes, her eyebrows contracting. “It’s all business, Anna. I may be the publisher, but I work for the company and for the investors in the company. I … You too, Anna, must comply with the board’s decisions. They want to expand. We’re going to merge with McDuffy. I’m not really leaving the company. I am going to be the head of the new merger, the head of Windsor-McDuffy.”

Anna stands up and gathers the shreds of her selfcontrol that had begun to unravel. She stretches out her hand to Tanya across her desk. “Congratulations. That is good news for you, Tanya. And well deserved.”

Tanya slides to the edge of her chair and takes the hand Anna offers her. “Good news for you too, Anna. Sit, sit. Let me tell you.”

Anna settles back in her chair and waits.

“First, we are not going to move you. But now Equinao is going to be more specialized than it was before. You know, our original plan was that Equiano would handle all the books by writers of color. That meant Asian, African, Latino, Indian, Korean, Caribbean, African American, what have you. But as you can see, the African American books took over. That list has just grown and grown, and Windsor has had to handle the spillover. Not doing a good job at it, if you ask me. So when we agreed to merge with McDuffy, we decided to create a specific publishing house for all writers of color, not just an imprint in another company. We’re going to call the new publishing house TeaHouse Press and merge McDuffy’s list of writers of color with our list. It’s going to be big, something that the publishing industry has never seen before.” Tanya’s voice strains with excitement, her eyes sparkle. “We’re going to take over the market of books by writers of color. This is going to be huge!”

Anna’s spine begins to tingle again. “You can’t be serious,” she says.

“As a heart attack. Think of it, Anna. Every writer of color will have to come to us. We are going to be the experts. We will corner that market. All the Asians, all the Africans, all the Latinos …”

“All the what-have-yous,” Anna says quietly.

“What did you say?” Tanya is staring at her.

“It’s racist,” Anna says.

“What?”

“What you plan to do is no less than racial segregation.”

“We’re not talking about people here, Anna. We’re talking about books.”

“People write books.”

“Of course people write books, but we are in the business of books, not people. We are publishing books, marketing books, selling books.”

“That people write.”

“I think if you open your mind, Anna, you’ll see how this is a good thing for the people who write books. They need us. We know the business of getting books to readers. With this new press, we will be able to focus all our attention on promoting and distributing books by writers of color. We can reach out to specific demographics. We can design print, electronic, and television advertisements targeted to specific groups. This will increase our market share. Writers will get better returns, higher royalties. Isn’t that what writers want?”

“They want to write good books.”

“Don’t be naïve, Anna. The only problem writers have with us is about money. They say we’re not promoting them enough, distributing their books widely enough. But bottom line, they are talking about money. That we’re not making enough money for them is their real complaint. You think if we made a lot of money for them they’d still complain? No, they’d be praising us to the hilt—it wouldn’t matter what we do, what we call ourselves. With TeaHouse Press we’ll be in the best position to sell their books, to make more money for them.”

“The name is racist,” Anna says.

“TeaHouse Press? You must be joking.”

“It sends a not-so-subtle signal that the books published here need not concern white readers.”

“Come on, Anna. Everybody drinks tea. Why, English people love tea. They drink it all the time. You can’t be more Anglo than the British! They drink tea in China, in India, on your islands in the Caribbean, right? They drink tea in Africa. Even in South Africa, those Afrikaners drink tea. What could possibly be racist in the name TeaHouse Press? Someone suggested Molasses House Press and Cocoa House Press. I could see how you could complain about those names. I mean molasses is definitely black and cocoa is brown, dark brown to be sure.”

“And so is tea,” Anna says, keeping her voice even.

Tanya plants both elbows firmly on top of the desk. She points her finger at Anna. “That’s your problem, Anna. You don’t understand niche marketing.”

“I understand that a well-written book is a wellwritten book regardless of the color of the writer’s skin.”

“That may be true, but a well-written book by a writer of color is more meaningful to a reader of color.”

“No more meaningful than to a white reader.”

“I disagree,” Tanya says. “People like stories that reflect their similar experiences. Readers of color get to see themselves in books where there are characters of color.”

“I see myself in Jane Austen,” Anna says.

“You’re educated.”

Anna’s head burns. “Careful, Tanya.”

“I mean, you’re a special reader. You’re different from the average black reader.”

“Careful, Tanya,” Anna says again.

“People like to read about themselves and people who are like them,” Tanya insists.

“People learn more from people whose experiences are different from theirs. You may be comforted to know that someone just like you has managed to overcome some adversity or has triumphed in some way, but you learn a lot about yourself, what your true values are, what your real positions are on issues, when you are out of your comfort zone. Like Brutus said to Cassius—”

Tanya throws back her head and laughs. “You’re proving my point, Anna. You’re an elitist. That’s your problem.”

“
The eye sees not itself
/
But by reflection, by some other things
.” Anna does not allow Tanya to derail her.

Tanya stands up. “I didn’t come here for a lecture, Anna.” Her eyes narrow to slits before they open again.

“Anyway,” she says, more calmly now, “I’ve never heard you object to Equiano, and Equiano is an imprint for writers of color.”

At Windsor
. But Anna holds her tongue. There is something in the way light blazes from Tanya’s eyes that warns her to say no more. Tanya Foster is still her boss. But if she dared, she would tell Tanya her hopes. She would tell her that she saw Equiano, and imprints like Equiano, as a transitional phase in publishing, a way to bring attention to the works of writers of color to publishers and readers. All readers. Eventually, imprints for writers of color would no longer be needed, their lists of books fully integrated with the lists of mainstream publishers. Equiano would be merged into Windsor, she thought, contracted, not expanded to a house of its own.

Tanya waits for her to respond, and when Anna doesn’t, she looks directly into her eyes and says, “I came to let you know what’s happening. I don’t want you to be surprised when you hear the news later today.”

More news
. Anna tenses but keeps her lips firmly closed.

“Tim Greene has been appointed to head TeaHouse Press.” Tanya frames the words as an announcement of an irrevocable decision.

Paula warned her. Still Anna is not prepared to hear this news. In all her suppositions of what might happen when Tanya leaves the company, she had not considered this one. Even as Tanya disclosed that she would head the newly formed Windsor-McDuffy Publishing Company, her brain continued to write the script she had rehearsed: Tim Greene would join Tanya. Didn’t Tanya admire him, praise him? “Where will that leave me?” She is aware she sounds nervous.

“You’ll have your position.” Tanya lowers her eyes. She slides her hands down the sides of her narrow skirt and twists it at her hips as if to adjust it. But her skirt does not need adjusting; it falls perfectly straight to her knees. “Equiano will be an imprint of TeaHouse Press,” she says.

“You mean I’ll be working for Tim Greene?”

“You’re smart, Anna. You read tea leaves.” She turns to leave, stops, and turns back. “Tea leaves, TeaHouse.” Her face breaks into a wide smile. “That’s a good one.” She is laughing when she opens the door. “Tea leaves, TeaHouse.

Funny!”

Her day is ruined. Less than an hour ago she was filled with such joy, such hope. She had allowed herself to make a cataclysmic leap to her past, reading meaning in signs, finding her future in a bunch of tulips, allowing herself to hope though she had no real evidence. Cataclysmic because she had long broken the habit, instilled in her from childhood, of believing in a world of spirits that existed side by side with the natural world, making their presence known by signs and symbols that warned of dangers or pointed the way to happiness.

She had grown up with stories of the spirits that roam the island, the soucouyant, the douen, La Diablesse, stories she breathed in like air and which permeated every segment of the island, sparing no one. Her mother is Catholic, but when Anna was a child, sick with fever, the chicken pox, or measles, she burned orange peel for the spirits to heal her daughter, and lit candles to the Virgin Mary. When Beatrice woke up one morning with black and blue marks on her arm during a week-long holiday the family was spending in the country, she swore a soucouyant had sucked her blood in the night. John Sinclair, who had converted to Catholicism to please his wife, tried to dissuade her, but all his patient reasoning about bats in the fruit trees that must have bitten her arm could not change Beatrice’s mind. She believed, as many others on the island believed, that the soucouyant lived under the silk fig tree. At night she shed her skin and sucked the blood of her victims before turning into a ball of fire. Anna has a vague memory of her paternal grandmother, who was not Catholic, reducing her mother to tears when she claimed that there was not one ounce of difference between Catholicism and obeah. The followers of both believed in the magic of transubstantiation, though that was not the word she used. As Anna remembers it, her grandmother, Mrs. Henrietta Sinclair, told her mother, Mrs. Beatrice Sinclair, that she knew good Catholics who did not swallow the Communion the priest placed on the tongues. They put it in their pockets and at night used the Communion in their obeah rituals to awaken the dead.

Anna has told Tanya this story. They laughed. Now Tanya has used it against her. “You read tea leaves,” she said sarcastically.

But she has not read the tea leaves. The fingers on her right hand twitched when she first met Tim Greene, but she dug her nails into the palm of her hand and let her brain determine what she should think. This morning was an aberration, reading her future in tulips, orange ones with yellow tips, her favorite. Now she must prepare herself for Tim Greene. He is to become her new boss. This is the reality she must face. How foolish she was to let her brain delude her into believing that he was no longer going to be with the company, that Tanya would take him with her when she left.

Perhaps if she had read the tea leaves she would have made more of the omissions in Tim Greene’s e-mail. Not one word about Raine when she had asked him to send her his notes and recount his meeting with the writer. But the boss does not have to report to his underling.

Tim Greene does not gloat. His manner is deferential toward her. He approaches her as he has always done. He does not call her boss, but he does not use her first name either. “Ms. Sinclair,” he says, offering his hand. “How good to see you. We missed you. We’ve put practically everything on hold, waiting for you to come back.”

She resists the temptation to ask,
What things? What have
you put on hold?
Instead she shakes his hand. “Congratulations,” she says. “Tanya tells me you are to be the new boss.”

He smiles and squeezes her hand reassuringly. “You are still the boss of Equiano,” he says.

“And you are going be the boss of the company that houses Equiano.”

“You’ve done good work here.” He pats her on the shoulder. “Nothing to worry about.”

She shivers at his touch though she has the presence of mind to pull herself together before he notices her reaction.
Nothing to worry about?
His rapid advance up the company is everything to worry about.

“When is the merger expected to take place?” she asks.

“The stockholders will vote tomorrow.”

“So soon?” Her eyes shoot open wide. It is too late to hide her dismay.

“It all came together very quickly.”

Anna can hardly believe this is true. “Is that why you were hired?”

“Tanya thought I’d be a match for the company. Help her improve sales.” It is a criticism aimed at her, she is certain. There is no need for him to be diplomatic—he is in charge now. She has argued against the books that put Equiano in the black. She wanted to change the cover of Bess Milford’s novel. She objected to the picture of the scantily dressed voluptuous black woman in the arms of a half-naked man. It is too explicit, she complained. Too erotic. It cheapens the novel. But this is what sells, what made the company rich, and Tim Greene was hired to make the company richer.

He is American, born here, African American, Paula reminded her. He knows the terrain better than she ever could.

“Hey, take that frown off your face,” Tim Greene says. “Everything will work out all right. We’ll talk. You’ll see.”

But see what? He does not say. He has to go to a meeting. To get things ready for the merger tomorrow, he tells her.

FOURTEEN

S
he does not discuss the changes in her office with her parents. She tells herself she will not add to the difficulties they are facing. The surgery was successful but there are no guarantees. Doctors are not deities; they are not God; they cannot guarantee the future. Yet if thoughts of uncertainty run through her mother’s mind, her mother conceals them well. The circles below her eyes are darker than usual and she cradles her left arm under the sling drawn across her shoulder, but these are the only observable signs she allows of the disease that had terrified her for months. Years, Dr. Ramdoolal said.